


Family comes before everything

by DoEScasTIElLove



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Babies, Dad Castiel, Dad Dean, Domestic Fluff, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family, Fluff, Gay Castiel (Supernatural), Kid Fic, Lawyer Sam Winchester, M/M, Mechanic Dean Winchester, Mom Jo, Mostly Gay Dean Winchester, Parents Castiel & Dean Winchester, Pregnancy, Teacher Castiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-06 20:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14656065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoEScasTIElLove/pseuds/DoEScasTIElLove
Summary: Dean Winchester had enough of his life on the road. Meeting a lady in an old bar was probably not the best way to approach his future, but it seemed to be the one that worked.So, after settling down, getting married and awaiting to be a dad, Dean did not expect to fall in love with his hot neighbour. But he did. And Cas own mysterious family status didn't help with the fight against the demons from the past at all.Could Dean have, what he never dared to dream about, a big, stable, happy family or was he cursed to follow his own dads destiny forever?





	1. The dark, old bar

**Author's Note:**

> To a lovely angel and a certain righteous man.  
> I own nothing!  
> It's my first real one, so no big deal. *cries in corner, because of excitement*

He met her in a dark, old bar.

Of course, it was a dark, old bar, where else would you meet the mother of your children? Dean Winchester didn’t want to go to said dark, old bar this evening. He was way too old for this game. To be precise he was like 15 years too old and his lack of enthusiasm seemed to show because not even the bartender was flirting with him and it somehow was her job.

He had done this quite a lot in his past. He went to a bar, ordered a few drinks and ended up in someone else’s bed. His ongoing age didn’t mean he wasn’t attractive anymore, on the contrary; he seemed to become more handsome with every passing year. But something was off today. Something inside of him didn’t want to screw around anymore.

It actually started a few weeks ago. Sammy, his not so little baby brother, got actually engaged. Sammy of all people. Of Course, he had already somehow settled down with this girl for four years, but that didn’t mean Dean wasn’t shocked. Sammy was still his baby brother after all.

So, after all those years of partying and screwing around, Dean had decided to settle down himself. The only problem was: He didn’t know how.

For the last three months, he had had a solid job as a mechanic in a garage and was still living in a motel room. As if something inside him told him to be always on the edge and ready to leave. He wondered if this was because of the fact that he had never in his life lived somewhere longer than two years and he had been a toddler back then. His dad's job as a militarian meant that they had to change their place of residence every few months and that left Dean apparently in the opinion that he had to keep up with this tradition.

While Dean was sitting there in this crappy bar, thinking about his screwed-up life, somebody let himself down on the barstool next to his.

It was a girl, most likely, he smelled her perfume before he looked up. When he met her eyes, he noticed a hint of wrinkles and corrected his thoughts to: It was a woman. She was actually very beautiful and seemed to be between thirty and thirty-five, but Dean knew in an instant, that he wasn’t into her.

“Hi, I’m Jo,” she greeted with a smirk, that hinted towards more. Dean smiled because he liked her smile and tried to say: ‘I don’t want to get in your pants today’ with it.

“I’m Dean.” He held out his hand and she took it. Her hand was warm and tiny, and Dean wished her long, blond her could have twisted his head. It hadn’t.

“So, what does a handsome man like you do here all alone on a Friday night?” asked she and Dean noticed her nervousness for the first time. She started to chew her lip, but not in a flirtatious way and her gaze more than often flickered to the left while she spoke.

“Not much.” He smiled again. He somehow started to like her.

“Soo, wanna have a drink with me?” she tried again and Dean started to pity her. After all, it wasn’t her fault.

“Yeah sure,” he answered and ordered two more shots of Whiskey before looking at her again. “So, what are you chasing?”

Her emotion flickered very obviously across her face and Dean tried to catch every single one. First, her face fell in pure shock, then she gathered herself. After that, there was a tiny hint of anger and frustration and then she showed her nervous smile again.

“What makes you think I’m chasing something?” she asked after just a moment and fluttered her eyelashes in a way that intended to attract her counterpart. Which was Dean Winchester. Which was the problem.

“Okay, first of all, you’re wearing high shoes, that you seem to detest a lot. Then there is your perfume. It’s way too strong for a human being. Shall I carry on?” Even if Dean was enjoying himself a little bit, he started to feel bad for the reddening woman in front of him.

“Look,” he said and laid a hand on her knee in front of him. “I am definitively not what you are searching for. But if you tell me, I can see if I can help you find it.”

“What do you get out of this?” Jo asked very skeptically. Dean could understand her feelings after all. First, he rejected her and then he asked if he could help her.

“Well, I’m bored.” He laughed. Probably this would help him forget his own stupid problems. “And it’s not your fault, that the first guy you ask is more a five than a four.”

Judging by the look on her face, she had never in her life heard of the Kinsey-scala. Of course, she hadn’t, Dean scolded himself, just because you aren’t straight, doesn’t mean everybody has to be interested in the subject.

“It means I’m mostly gay,” he clarified and comprehension flashed across her face. That was the moment a normal person would have left.

Jo didn’t, and Dean could not suppress the feeling, that she was a little bit relieved to have someone to talk to. Even if it was a stranger in a crappy bar, that she knew less than twenty minutes.

“Well…” she began. “I don’t know where to start.” Dean tried to look reassuringly and she let out a nervous laugh. “I think I start with the reason why I’m single.” To that, he raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything. He wanted her to finish the story.

“My last boyfriend and I, we were together for seven years until I noticed, that he slept with two other women. First, I was furious, but then I thought, that I should have noticed it. I mean, two other girls at the same time and I was too busy with my job or something. Or maybe I knew and didn’t want to admit it. But it doesn’t matter.” She licked her lips and took another drink.

“The moment I was out of our apartment with all my stuff, I realized that I had been waiting for something. All the time, for the last three years or something, I had been waiting for him to ask me to marry him and to settle down. I always wanted kids, but I thought, he wasn’t ready. He still needs one or two years; he is still young.”

“I’m not young anymore, and I don’t want to wait anymore.” Jo hesitated for a moment as if she hadn’t ever said the following out loud.

“I want to have children, and I’m searching for a father.”

Dean was completely taken aback. Never in his life, he would have imagined meeting this woman to day in this bar, who somehow had exactly the same wishes as him. He wanted children; he wanted to settle down. He wanted it pretty bad.

“By the way,” she said and brought him back to the moment. “His name was Dick and he married one of the two girls a week ago.” Her grin seemed a little bit pained but it didn’t look like she still loved him. That was good.

“Okay,” Dean said after a few moments in silence. “That’s pretty fucked up.”

They shared an amused smile, and Dean asked himself for what felt like the hundredth time this evening, why, oh why he couldn’t be attracted to this woman. It would solve both their problems. It would be so easy, but easy didn’t fit in Deans life apparently.

“I assume you are searching for somebody to raise the children with? Or are you looking for a sperm donator?” She actually could have gone to the sperm bank, if she wanted the latter, Dean scolded himself.

“I definitively would love to raise my kids with somebody else, but I don’t have to love him. It would also be okay if he didn’t want to participate in their lives, but it would be easier the other way.” Easier. If it wasn’t easy, why did Dean make it hard?

“Jo,” he said and took both her hands in his. There was a hint of pink on her cheeks, but she didn’t seem as flattered by his charm as everyone else. In fact, she didn’t even look like she wanted to undress him, which was very good for his newly forming plan.

“I… really don’t know how to do this.” Now it was on him to laugh a bit nervously. “Since my brother got engaged, I wanted to settle down. I really want kids and maybe marriage, but also a big house with a garden and stuff. I know a mostly gay guy is not what you are looking for, and I am very sorry, that I am not attracted to you, because you are beautiful.”

“You probably cannot imagine how much I would like to do this because of the right reasons, but when is it ever easy.” He grinned at her questioning face, but she didn’t seem disgusted. Good.

“So, Jo I-don’t-know-your-last-name, do you wanna marry me?”

There was a short, shocked silence and then she grinned.

“Okay.” Her laughter sounded exited now. “And it’s Harvelle, just for the forms.”

-

They had talked for the rest of the evening about everything and nothing. They had exchanged numbers and then they had gone home. Each of them to their own home.

After two days it still seemed like the strangest thing Dean had ever done, but he didn’t mind. Despite everything, it felt right and he couldn’t stop grinning, not even at work, where he was completely overqualified and therefore bored. It was like he could finally dream again, like he didn’t have to wait all of this time it took to fall in love, before settling down. He could do it right away.

Jo and Dean had a few more ‘dates’ to get to know each other and to verify, that the other wasn’t a serial killer, before they decided to get pregnant first, then marry and then find a nice house in the suburbs. That way they weren’t left with strange responsibilities if it didn’t work.

Their first time was very strange. They had talked about alternative fertilization methods but decided it would be easier to just have sex. And Dean had been having sex with women before, not many but there actually had been a time before college, where he had thought he was straight. He always thought that the strict, military education by his father had made him want to be as expected, but he realized he simply wasn’t.

So, when they had sex for the first time, with someone they both weren’t really attracted towards, there was a lot of laughter and a video on the laptop for Dean. He promised Jo to prepare himself beforehand the next time and they went to bed in Deans motel room.

It was strangely easy to live with Jo. She was an easy woman with not many complaints about Deans behavior. At first, he had tried to hide it from her, but beside from cooking spaghetti and doing his one colored laundry, he had no idea how to have a normal life.

They didn’t try to expect too much and after the first failure in the first month, they just tried again.

And then Jo was suddenly pregnant. Dean had been below an old car when she phoned him and hit his head on the underside.

So, when they finally went to the register office to marry, Dean had had a big bump on his forehead and the lack of kissing irritated even the bored guy that took their ‘I will’s. Nonetheless, they both had the feeling that this was somehow right, and they weren’t missing much in their new life plan.

Next, they had to find a house and after finally calling Sammy and telling him about the changes in his life, Dean wanted nothing more than to live next to his little brother. They hadn’t met often in the last two years or something and settling down was a good opportunity to change that.

Sam had been genuinely happy for Dean, and the latter was very relieved, that his brother didn’t think of it as unfair since he had been working for the same goal for way longer. He even laughed and told Dean, that something crazy like that was exactly what he had expected from his big brother.

That way the first time Jo met Sam, they were meeting at the third open house in a nice suburb of San Francisco, where Sam worked as a lawyer. They drove there in Deans beloved ‘67 Chevrolet Impala and walked up the driveway to where Sam was sitting on the front steps of the cute blue house.

“I like it, and I haven’t even been in there,” he greeted his big brother and rose to a stand. Jo’s eyes went a little bit wider at the sight of the huge man but she still shook his hand immediately.

“I like him, and I haven’t even met him properly,” she answered with a grin. “Hi, I’m Jo.”

“I’m Sam. I really hope the kid gets your sense of humor, rather than Deans.” Dean knew of course, that he didn’t mean it, they mocked each other every time they met.

Dean guided both of them inside by opening the door with the key he got from the broker.

“How are you doing?” Sam asked Jo behind him. She was at the end of the third month already and if one looked at the right angle, one could see a tiny bump. Dean and she hadn’t had any sexual contact since they knew she was pregnant, but they liked to cuddle more than often and Dean loved to caress her belly.

“I’m very fine.” She laughed. “Dean is a very caring husband and a very nervous soon-to-be father. We have our first real appointment tomorrow, to know if the baby is healthy, you know? And he asked me five times on our way at what time we had to be there.”  
Dean didn’t want to admit it, but she was actually right. He hadn’t expected to care this much for the little bean already, but he did. Wait, correct that, the baby was already bigger than a bean, he reminded himself.

“Okay, enough fun made of me,” he told them, before stepping in and becoming speechless.

“It’s perfect,” Jo said next to him and smiled wide. The open spatial concept and the big windows on the backside where exactly what they both had wished for. To the right of the entry was the staircase, that led to the first floor and behind that, Dean could see a big, open kitchen with bright yellow cupboards. To the left was a little bathroom and straight ahead was the room that was most likely the living room and dining room in one.

But the best thing was the big, green garden, that was reachable through the glass doors and the veranda that led there. They went upstairs to verify that they had four bedrooms, two for the kids they wanted to have and one additional for each of them.

-

The house was absolutely perfect, and they bought it right away, with a little help from Sam and the bank. Jo got a new job as a secretary because she didn’t want to just sit around until the date of birth and Dean found himself an opportunity to be more than an overqualified mechanic.

They renovated the house and by the time they moved in, Jo was already six months pregnant.

With twins.

They had found out the day after the open house with Sam and they couldn’t have been happier. Whoever bought Dean in that bar seven month back, was a saint. He now had everything he had wished for and even more. Because Jo was kind and wonderful and caring and he loved her, but not in a romantic way.

He shoved the voice aside, that told him, that this couldn’t be enough. That he would want more one day. That one day Jo would come up with some other dude, that she wanted to marry and to live with, what was of course totally understandable. That Jo would leave, like everything in his life had always left, because he had moved away or somebody died.

They threw a big house-warming party with some of Sam’s and Jo’s friends and some neighbors they had met in the last two months.

The party had been great, and Jo had been happily chatting with Sam’s fiancée Jess and a young, bubbly woman from next door, that stood out immediately with flaming red hair and a Star Trek shirt. Dean was content, that she made friends that easy and the sight eased the guild, that he had had for taking her out of her familiar environment. Of course, she had told him, she was fine with moving here, but Dean felt guilty anyway.

It was one day later and therefore a Sunday when Dean took the trash out because party people always left a lot of garbage behind.

It was a Sunday when he met him.


	2. The garbage bin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean meets Castiel Novak. At his garbage bin.  
> So yeah, and then they meet again and Dean gets to know Cas daughter, whose name is Mia and who is very cute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's me again!  
> So much Fluff to go *_*

Dean turned around after putting the trash in the garbage bin. He thought about the question, how he could make Jo watch something else than Friends with him tonight when he looked up.

There was a guy crossing the street. He had dark hair and was carrying a little child on his hip while balancing some bags with groceries on the other, most likely.

And he was drop-dead gorgeous.

Dean stopped dead in his tracks and couldn’t close his mouth for a few seconds. The guy was heading towards the house on Deans Right and just the way he walked was something Dean wanted to watch on repeat for the rest of his life.

As he stepped on the sidewalk, he turned his head and looked Dean right in the eyes.

And Dean was lost. He had never seen eyes this blue, this energetic and this sorrowful at the same time. He smiled a shy smile, and Dean forgot his name.

“Hello,” the stranger said and came nearer to greet the new neighbor, apparently.

Dean tried to remember how to talk until the guy came to a halt right in front of him and adjusted the little girl on his hip. She had even darker hair than her dad and little pink hair clasps in it. She was fast asleep and Dean had to suppress a sound adoration at the sight of her cute little face.

“Hi.” Dean had to clear his throat. “I’m Dean. Winchester. I live here.” Well, way to make a fool out of yourself with your first words, he scolded himself.

The man’s smile widened just a bit.

“I’m Castiel Novak.” He pointed in the direction of his house with his bags. “I live there.”

Dean just had to smile. Castiel. Castiel had this mischievous look on his face as if he knew what Dean had been thinking. And Dean didn’t mind at all.

It was a warm early summer night, but the light wind caught in Castiel’s hair and he drew the tiny girl closer to his body. He looked down at her and Dean really, really wanted to take a Photograph of the face he made and keep it in his breast pocket forever.

Get it together man, he thought.

“And this is Mia, my little girl.” The last word was barely audible, and Dean noticed the guys exhaustion beneath his obvious adoration.

“How old is she,” he asked and Castiel looked back up into his eyes. Those blue eyes.

“She’s one and a half, but already talks as if she was two,” he said proudly. “I should probably head inside, we had problems with the car and she had to be in bed like an hour ago.” To Dean, it seemed like the other man also didn’t want to leave this conversation, but he must be dreaming already.

Then something he said caught his attention.

“What’s the problem with the car?” he asked. “I actually own half of an auto shop and I can probably help.”

Castiel’s face lightened noticeably at Deans words and Dean really wanted to keep it that way. “I can look at it tomorrow and if necessary, take it to my shop three blocks away. Do you need to get to work tomorrow?”

Castiel nodded. “I work at a high school, four miles from here,” he said and Dean had twenty new questions immediately. “I would ride the bike, but I have to get Mia to her childminder beforehand.”

“I’ll take you with my car,” Dean said before he could think. He really should not be out of the shop all day long, but he muted the reasonable voice in his head very fast at the sight of Cas full lips.

Cas. That was new and he liked it. A lot.

When his counterpart wanted to protest, he laid a hand on his free shoulder and cringed inwards at the touch. And it was not in a bad way.

“Cas,” he said and saw surprise flicker across the man’s face. “I insist.”

“Okay.” Did Dean imagine him licking his lips? “But I owe you one for that.”

And that was that. They said their goodbyes and Dean stood thinking in his front yard until Jo called for him and he headed back inside.

Oh boy, he was so, so fucked.

-

The next morning Dean woke up with a feeling of excitement in his stomach. He tried to remember, where it came from until a set of blue eyes flickered across his mind. Castiel. Right.

He tried not to run down the stairs after brushing his teeth in haste but failed completely. It felt like there were a thousand bugs under his skin, trying to escape and he had never before felt like this. What an irrational reaction of a ten-minute conversation with his neighbor. Probably Dean was becoming ill.

Ten minutes before they agreed to meet in front of Dean's car, Dean emerged from his house and saw that Cas was already standing there. He had a baby seat in one arm and Mia on the other. And he was still gorgeous, his hair standing out in every direction but in a sexy way and his blue tie matching his eyes.

“Hello Dean,” he greeted as Dean approached and tried to wink with the hand, that was holding his daughter.

“Hi,” Dean said and cleared his throat. Get it together, man, he’s probably married. Of course, he had spent the rest of the evening yesterday with thinking of reasons to not flirt with his hot neighbor, but he seemed to forget every one of them.

The happy smile, Cas sent his way made his heart flutter in a strange way. He opened the car and after Cas tried to coordinate the kid and the car seat in his arms for a few moments, he turned helplessly towards Dean. The girl was awake but still a little bit fussy, probably because she just got up.

“Can you take her for a short moment? I need to adjust the car seat,” Cas said and put the seat on the ground.

Dean reached out with his arms and Cas showed him how to hold the baby close to his chest.

He just couldn’t suppress the grin, that was spreading across his face, as he looked at the tiny child. She seemed very fragile and Dean tried to imagine what his own children would look like soon. The warmth that was spreading across his chest at that thought was different from when he looked at Cas but it was still very dominant.

“A little practice could help me, actually, I think,” Dean said and looked up at Cas bending over the backseat of his Baby. Oh boy.

“Practice?” Cas voice sounded muffled out of the car. “What do you need practice for?”

Dean tried really hard to concentrate, but seemed to fail, because he needed a few moments to answer. Mia wiggled in his arms, touched his chin with her tiny hand and Dean tickled her stomach in response. Her shy laughter made Cas turn around again.

“Ah, I’m going to be a dad of two in three months,” he said with a smile.

Cas face lit up immediately like it had done yesterday and Dean thought of the sun coming up. “Congratulations,” he said. “It will be great to have more little kids in this area.”

Dean handed Mia to Cas and let him show how to put her in the car seat. They got into the car and the moment the motor started, Dean couldn’t hold back anymore. He really didn’t want to sound strange, but something inside of him had to ask this question.

“What about her mother?” Oh god, what if she was dead. “I mean, couldn’t she bring Mia today?”

There was a long silence after that and it was only interrupted by Mia, flickering through a baby book and babbling nonsense.

“She has stuff to do,” Cas finally said. Dean didn’t press on, even if he wanted to.

They got to the house of the childminder pretty quickly and Dean waited in the car until father and daughter had said their goodbyes. He heard Mia through the open window, telling his daddy that she would cook soup for him, in a way that was really impressive for an eighteen-month-old child.

As Cas got back into the car, he sighed deeply. “I hate to give her away every day, but we have to pay the rent somehow. You said you had an auto shop?”

At that, Dean told Cas the rest of the drive, how he managed to buy himself into the company of Bobby Singer and how they were running it together now. Dean had many improvements in mind already and the older man was happy to give away some of the responsibility.

Dean promised to be back at the high school when Cas was finished and drove off fast after that. He didn’t want to get into the turmoil, that high school students usually caused.

-

Dean somehow felt like one of these high school students himself. He came back to inspect Cas car, a dark blue Prius, that he didn’t like in an instant. I’m going to get rid of this car, he thought to himself.

Then it hit him. He had just been thinking about how they would sell this car because Dean still had his Impala, that wasn’t perfect for the kids but was otherwise just awesome. How had he come to think of a future with this guy he met yesterday?

The guy, that probably had a wife at home, whom he had a daughter with. That guy that was most likely straight. Even imagining him with any woman, or generally in bed with anybody else than Dean, made him strangely jealous. Goddamnit, he should just forget him. His beautiful blue eyes, his strangely arranged hair, that always looked like he just got up, his lean shoulders…

He had to tell someone. Of course, Dean always seemed like the guy, that never talked about feelings, that was too manly and strong to admit them, but Dean really needed somebody to listen and give him some advice.

Preferable someone, that wouldn’t mock him, but sadly Dean hadn’t any real friends besides Jo and his brother. So, he would choose Sam, because he was the first one to know about Deans sexuality, even before Dean knew himself. He was actually quite nervous but dialed the number anyway.

His greasy fingers tapped an unknown rhythm on Cas engine while he waited.

“Yeah?” Sam’s voice sounded over the telephone. “Dean?”

“Okay, this will probably sound very strange.” Dean paused for a second. “Okay, this will sound strange. Okay, so I met this guy yesterday and he is very nice and looks very good and he has a daughter and I think I like him, but he is most likely straight and married and doesn’t like me at all. What shall I do?”

There was a short silence on the other end and then laughter.

“Well, Dean, I haven’t heard you ramble like this since you were a teen and wanted me to know that you liked John Travolta more than Olivia Newton-John, so it must be serious.” Dean could clearly hear him grin through his voice. “why don’t you just do what you always do?”

“Fuck’em and go?” Dean asked, still a bit unsure, if he was ready to joke jet.

“No!” Sam laughed again. “Ew, I didn’t want to imagine that. No, I mean, flirt a little, get to know him, find out, if he is gay, something like that.”

Dean nodded. “Okay, okay, that sounds reasonable,” he said, already deep in thoughts.

“So, as much, as I love to play your gossip friend, I really need to go back to work. You know, at 10 a.m., like a normal person.” As much as he loved him, he still was his brother.

“Bitch,” Dean managed to answer.

“Jerk.” And he hung up.

Flirt with him, Dean thought, I can do that. If you believed certain guys and some woman, he was very good at that.

He wondered if he should ask Jo, what she thought about that, but then again, a little flirt wouldn’t hurt anybody. Cas was probably straight anyway.

-

Dean worked on the car and then drove to the auto shop for some paperwork. By the time he had to start to get Cas, the blue car had been repaired and was ready to go. Through his back mirror of the Impala, Dean could see the baby seat and felt wonderfully domestic.

At the high school parking lot, he thrummed his fingers on the steering wheel. Now that he had a plan, he got a little bit nervous, despite the fact, that he had done this on numerous occasions.

Dean sat on the edge of the car seat until Cas emerged from the front doors. His hair was messier than before and his clothes looked a little bit disheveled, but his appearance attracted Deans attention, nonetheless. Two students accompanied him and seemed to chat nonstop. Both girls had long blond hair and Dean could sense, that they tried to show Cas their physical attributes.

As Cas spotted the Impala, he said his goodbyes to the disappointed looking girls and approached the car.

Dean thought about getting out and holding the door for him, but he abandoned the idea pretty fast. After all, everybody on school ground seemed to know him and Dean didn’t want to embarrass him this way.

”Nice companionship you got there,” Dean said after Cas fell into the black leather. At the look of his frown, Cas didn’t approve the assumption.

“Dean, I don’t know, if you know this, but a student teacher relationship is something illegal,” He deadpanned and Deans grin grew wider. “Besides, I’m not interested.”

Why not, Dean wanted to ask, but he didn’t want to assume, that he himself was into them. That would have been really contra productive, considering his plans. So, Dean just looked Cas up and down, showing obvious approval on his face and smiled what he hoped was warmly. “So, how was your day?”

On their way to the daycare, Cas told Dean about annoying students and even more annoying teachers and how one of his kids had thought, that world war two had happened only ten years ago.

He did this all with a wide smile on his face, though, and Dean got the impression, that he really enjoyed his job. Especially the work with children seemed to make the dark-haired man happy, and Dean felt a strange warmth spread in his chest at the sight.

They got Mia and Cas let Dean put her into the car seat. The little girl laughed silently at Deans attempt to keep her entertained during the procedure and clutched a stuffed cat to her chest all the time.

“Do I have to be worried?” Cas laughed from the front seat.

Dean looked at him puzzled while trying to connect the mechanism, that was attached to the seat. His smile only grew wider. “I think it’s way too early for her first boyfriend.”

The second he heard it, Dean responded, even though he probably should have taken a moment to think beforehand. “Don’t worry Cas; I’m most certainly on the other bus.”

There was a long silence after this. The two men stared into each other’s eyes as if there was no way to look away as if they could talk through this invisible connection. “Okay,” Cas said after a while and Dean let out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding.

“Okay, so, I mean, what about your wife?” Cas asked. Dean was glad, that there was the car between them because he still wasn’t comfortable to admit this information about himself to other men. Especially if they were the most attractive man existing, with shining blue eyes, dark, messy hair and pink lips.

“Let’s, let’s talk about this somewhere else,” Dean said and licked his lips. “What about, I let you pay me with a dinner for repairing your car?”

At that, Cas looked a little bit surprised and then strangely disappointed. “Dinner sounds great, but,” he trailed off.  
“Wait, how did you repair my car in just one day?”

Dean laughed at the other man’s puzzled expression. “It’s my job,” Dean explained and got into the driver seat. As Cas closed his door, he smiled a little at Dean, what brought the latter’s heartbeat in a strange rhythm. He really needed to control his reactions, if he wanted to woo Cas systematically.

They stopped at Dean’s favorite Burger Restaurant chain and Dean was happy to finally talk again after a drive in tickling silence. He asked Cas about his favorite food and what Mia liked to eat, at what the slightly smaller man only laughed and Mia brabbled something that sounded like ‘potatoes’ or something. They got a booth by the windows and the blond-haired waitress provided them with a highchair and menus.

They ordered some drinks and Dean eased himself back in an open pose, where his arms were splayed across his backrest. He needed to gain some courage, to tell his life story to this wonderfully gorgeous man in front of him. Mia was occupied with her stuffed cat again as he started to speak.

“I have mostly been with men in my life. I met some woman, that I found attractive, but they were very special and very few.”

Dean cleared his throat as the waitress approached them and took their orders. Mia’s chanting of ‘potatoes, potatoes’ were accompanied by her banging the cat on the surface of the chair. Cas ordered her some mashed potatoes with carrots and got himself a cheeseburger, claiming, that these were made in heaven. Dean couldn’t suppress a grin at that, ordering the same.

“So where was I,” he started again and looked out of the window beside him. The parking lot outside reminded him of the bar where he met Jo. He started to tell Cas about his previous life on the roads and how much he had felt that something was missing. He told him about the night he met his beautiful wife, saw something flicker through Cas eyes, that he couldn’t identify clearly and explained how their interest had matched each other.

“Yeah, and that is how we made the covenant to start a family together,” Dean concluded.

He looked back in Cas face and saw it split by a very gummy grin. The burgers had arrived during Deans explanation and he dug into his to avoid Cas gaze, that most certainly still lingered on him. He had a blush creep up his neck and his heart beating fast at the thoughts that the look on Cas face provided him with.

“Okay,” said Cas after he chewed a bite of his burger and cleared his mouth. “So, you two are more like partners in parenthood than romantically involved partners.”

It wasn’t a question rather than a statement and Dean wondered for a second if Cas needed this reassurement for himself. But then again, he had probably no interest in Dean, romantically or otherwise. He was just grateful for the help with his car.

“Why did you two marry then?” Cas interrupted Deans downward spiraling thoughts. At the look on Deans face, he explained further. “I mean, you didn’t have to marry and what if you met somebody, who you wanted to have a romantical relationship with.” Was that hope in Cas eyes? No, no chance.

Dean had abandoned his cheeseburger completely. Back then it had been a really logical step to marry Jo, mostly because of the practicability of it but also because he didn’t want to be alone anymore. The ring on his finger meant that he belonged to somebody and he bet his kids would like to have an almost normally functioning family. Of course, he had stuffed his ring in his pocket while repairing the car and didn’t put it back on. Strangely he didn’t want to do it now, in front of Cas.

“Well, it seemed practical back then,” he said lamely and grinned at Mia, who had stuffed her face with mashed potatoes and smiled shyly back at him.

They were both silent after that, each of them following their own thoughts. Dean really wanted to say more, he wanted Cas to understand, that his marriage didn’t mean, that he couldn’t go on dates or couldn’t fall in love with a man with ridiculously blue eyes. He also wanted to ask Cas if he was married or why he hadn’t seen or talked about Mia’s mother, but the thought about the black-haired man’s reaction in the morning stopped him.

They finished their food and drove home talking about trivia like the weather and neighbors. Dean didn’t want to leave Cas, but he also wanted to meet Jo and make sure, that the babies were alright. When they separated at the place of their first meeting (Dean’s trash cans), Cas wishing of a nice evening was accompanied by a sad smile and Dean really wanted to hug him.

But that must have been his imagination, Dean thought as he reached his front door. Why should Cas be sad to leave him and/or to go home?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was cute enough^^


	3. The Saturday afternoon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean decides to invite Cas to meet his family and the angels-but-not-angels family secrets are slowly revealed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dean in this story really likes to have a definition for his sexuality, doesn't he.

Eight months into their pregnancy, Dean couldn’t await the day he would meet his babies any longer. He felt bad for Jo, who had all the pain and uncomfortableness of carrying them around and tried to help her as much as he could. They knew it would be so much more work from the moment they were finally parents, but it was a time they wanted to reach badly.

And then there was still Cas.

Dean met him almost every day, if it was in the morning, when they both headed off to work, or when they ‘accidently’ brought the trash out at the same time. Still, they never had enough time for a real conversation, because of the family life they both tried to manage besides working on a full-time job.

Dean had convinced himself to go slowly, Cas was still his neighbor and if it got awkward between them, they couldn’t just avoid each other forever, but he missed those blue eyes. And this gummy smile, he wanted to see his wonderful, gummy smile again.

So, asking Jo, Sam and Jess, if it was okay, that he brought another neighbor to their weekly gatherings/sport-on-TV-watching sessions on Saturdays was only the first step in his plan. Normally, Charlie would come as well, but she caught a bad virus and lay at home in her bed.

Dean wondered again, why he bonded so easily with the redhead next door, as he approached the Novak’s porch. He felt as nervous, as the day he asked Bela Talbot to be his prom date.

After he rang the bell, Dean waited almost two minutes, until a very sleepy looking Cas opened the door and blinked at him. Through the small gap above the dark-haired man, a very dark and colorless living room was visible, even though it was still bright and sunny outside. Dean tried to explain it with the fact, that Cas had obviously been sleeping before he opened the door, but this room didn’t look friendly or appropriate for a child in any way.

“Oh, hello Dean,” were Cas first words after a moment of silence. The wrinkles, that had been on his forehead smoothed out and a little smile tucked on his lips.

“I’m sorry, I woke you up,” Dean said after he regained control over his bodily functions again. He looked at his feet, a strange wave of nervousness overcoming him. “I just wanted to know, if you wanted to come to kind of a neighbor meeting at my house. I mean, today it’s somehow just my family, but still…”

Dean heard Cas chuckle and looked up again. Damn, if it weren’t for those blue eyes, Dean thought. But he would have fallen in love anyway.

Wait, love? Did he really just think this for the first time in front of Cas, while trying to have a conversation with him? He was so screwed.

“I’d love to,” Cas said as if he just heard Deans thoughts and wanted to make fun of him. “But I need to bring Mia, she just got of her nap and wants to color all her books at once.” His grin showed Dean what a proud father he was and made him love him even more.

“Sure, no problem!” Dean’s face almost cracked at how wide he grinned.

When Cas got back after telling Dean to wait and closing the door in his face, he had his equally sleepy looking daughter in his arms. She seemed to fuss a little bit, but as soon as she saw Dean, she was smiling her sweetest smile and reaching her arms out to him.

Dean took her and swung her around. In the last two month, he had grown very fond of the little girl and she had already started to call him “Den”.

“Den, Den,” Mia laughed in her little baby voice until she suddenly stopped and anxiously looked in the direction of the hidden parts of the house. Cas shrugged his coat on and gave her a kiss to the nose, but he didn’t say anything to her strange behavior.

And then Dean couldn’t concentrate on it anymore, because Cas closed the door and now stood very close to him, lightly touching him, chest to chest on the side that wasn’t carrying Mia.

Dean was suddenly struck by how good Cas smelled. It was a combination of rainstorm and lavender and he absolutely loved it. There was the evil word again. “Are you okay?” Cas almost whispered in his ear and the brush of hot air sent shivers down Dean’s spine.

Dean nodded, turned around and tried to walk straight back to his house. Had Cas done this on purpose? Was he somehow flirting with Dean?

-

As they walked into the Winchesters living room, Mia was already giggling again. It was still shy and silent, but Dean was really happy to have her content again.

“Hi everybody,” he greeted the only family left for him, what made them all turn their heads. “I want to introduce to you, our neighbor Cas and his daughter Mia.” Cas smiled politely and made an awkward handwave, while Mia hid his head in the crook of Deans neck and then extended her tiny hands towards her dad.

After Cas had taken his daughter, Dean continued by introducing his family. “So, the giant here is Sam, my little brother and this is his almost-wife Jess. And back there on the couch is my very pregnant Jo, who apparently can’t stand up anymore.”

Everybody shook hands and Dean placed Cas and Mia on Jo’s side of the couch, while he occupied armchair on her other side.

“So, you are the famous, mysterious Castiel,” Jo said and added, much to Dean’s embarrassment: “Dean talks a lot about you. I’m sorry I couldn’t meet you earlier.” The blond-haired man knew about his wife’s bluntness but looked almost as shocked as Cas looked surprised.

In fact, Dean had told her about his crush on his neighbor a week after he had repaired his car. He really didn’t want to hurt her feelings and therefore made sure, that she knew, what his mind was occupied with. She also had admitted, that it probably hadn’t been the best idea to marry, because of the probability to actually find romantic love, but he talked her out of it. Despite everything, he was very glad to be married to her.

“I’m very happy to meet you, too,” Cas answered politely. “I assume the pregnancy is at last very uncomfortable at this late stage.” He rearranged Mia in his lap and smiled softly at her, while she was chewing at her fingers.

Dean had never registered how polite Cas was when he was talking to other people than him.

“Yes, but when I look at Dean with your daughter, I can imagine, that, when they are finally here it will be worth it.” Jo grinned shamelessly at Cas and he seemed to lose a bit of his tenseness. Dean had been a little bit nervous, but there was no way in hell, that somebody as great as Cas wouldn’t like his family.

“So, did you already think about names?” Cas asked and Jo and he started to discuss the problematics of naming two children at once. Since they only knew the gender of one of the babies, because the other one had been hiding, they had tried to come up for fitting names for a girl-girl pair and a girl-boy pair.

“Hey,” Sam said to Dean from his other side on the second sofa. Jess was occupied with reading a bridal magazine and Dean grinned. “I think your wife already likes him,” the younger man teased and his brother shoved him in the side.

Dean looked back over his shoulder at Cas and tried to see him through the eyes of his family, but he failed the moment these blue eyes flickered to him. There were crinkles forming around them as the dark-haired man smiled softly at him and Dean's heart began to stutter in his chest.

“Don’t drool, Dean,” Sam whispered in his ear and Dean, trying to come up with a good comeback, answered bluntly: “You don’t drool, drool...”

Sam laughed loudly at him and then stood up to go to the kitchen, probably to get more beer from the fridge.

Right in time for Dean to hear Jo asking: “And what about Mrs. Novak? I haven’t seen her around yet.” He couldn’t leave his family alone for one second. They would let everything crash around them and Cas would probably never talk to him after this evening.

“Cas, you don’t have to answer that,” Dean supplied fast after a moment of silence, even though he really wanted to know.

“No, it’s okay, Dean,” Cas said, looking down at his hands in his lap. He had set Mia to the ground during his conversation with Jo and she was happily coloring an entire site of one of her books purple. “My wife...” Dean’s heart sunk into his stomach at that. “She is sick, so she has to sleep a lot.” Cas sighted after that, as if it lifted a heavy weight from his shoulders, letting them slump forward. “She is at home, resting right now.”

Deans heart continued to clench uncontrollably. Not only because the guy he loved was straight and had a wife, but also the sad look on his face made Dean’s guts churn. He seemed even guilty, a facial expression, that Dean couldn’t find a reason for.

He tried his best to fake a smile but probably failed miserably. Even Jess was now looking at them with pity in her eyes. Dean wanted to comfort his neighbor, that somehow also had become his friend, but he really needed some air right now. He stood up and walked wordlessly through their open back door.

The green grass of his backyard needed a cut and the empty brown space to the left of Dean reminded him, that he had wanted to plant some vegetables to teach his kids about gardening one day. Since they hadn’t been living in a house with a garden when he had been a child himself, he wanted to give his children everything he had missed out.

After a few minutes of sitting on the stairs, that connected his porch with his garden, he felt someone sitting down next to him. To his surprise, it was neither Sam nor one of the women. It was Cas.

“Sorry for ruining the mood,” Cas started and Dean couldn’t believe his ears. This guy apologized for having a sick wife, how sick was that.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?” Dean asked bluntly, because yes, he was very bad at all the feels stuff, but he didn’t care right now. “I mean, I know this isn’t something you tell your neighbor, but I thought the both of us were something like friends by now.”

At that, Cas turned his surprised face to look right into Dean’s eyes. “Yes,” he said and a warm little smile spread across his face and lit it up from the sadness about his wife. Castiel’s wife, Dean thought. He also registered, that their faces were now only about ten centimeters apart and his breath hitched in his throat despite everything.

“I’m sorry,” Cas said but didn’t lean back. “I think I was… ashamed or something like that. I don’t want people to look at me as if they are sorry, because they shouldn’t be.”

Dean wanted to ask, what he meant by that, but he had made the mistake to look down at Cas mouth. Oh, those gorgeous lips. He knew his gaze lingered there for too long and when he looked up into the other man’s eyes again he imagined he saw an unspoken question there. Unconsciously, he leaned in a bit, never averting his gaze from those blue orbits.

He saw emotion after emotion flicker across Cas face and when their lips were only about one centimeter apart, Dean’s senses suddenly snapped back in.

What was he doing here? This guy was married and had just told him, that his wife was sick and instead of comforting him, Dean took advances of his situation by tricking him into an intimate position.

He scrambled to his feet quickly.

“You…” Dean cleared his throat. “Eh... Why, why shouldn’t they be sorry, I mean she is your wife.” He tried to gather his thoughts, but everything seemed to revolve around the other man’s lips. Damn, Dean, concentrate, he thought.

As Cas also rose to his feet, Dean took a step back, what provided Cas with a look of confusion on his face.

“It’s not the way you think,” Cas said, looking down on his shoes now. If it wasn’t for his mental fight right now, Dean would have thought he looked adorable. “I didn’t want to tell you, to not make you think less of me.” The word ‘impossible’ crossed Dean’s mind at that. “But it is my fault, that she is sick.”

Wait, what? Dean’s mind supplied helpfully.

That was not anything near the things Dean had imagined. How could this guy be the reason for the illness of his wife? Did he, like, shoot her or something? But no, this was Cas they were talking about. Sweet, innocent Cas, who loved bees and cheeseburgers.

“What, what… what?” Dean stammered as soon as he had found his sense of speaking again. “Why would it be your fault?”

Dean could hear Cas taking a deep breath, looking anywhere but in the taller man’s eyes. That was weird.

“I will tell you,” Cas said after a while, probably staring at the birds singing in the treetops. “But it’s a longer story and we probably shouldn’t leave your family alone for so long.” Okay, the party inside was nothing Dean had thought about in the last couple of minutes but he only felt a slight sting of guiltiness.  
“Cas,” he said, unconsciously putting a hand on his shoulder and very consciously, suddenly feeling the warmth radiating from there. Then the both of them heard Mia starting to fuss, probably over her coloring book, that was completely purple by now and they turned their heads to look inside the house.

“Okay,” Dean started again. “I can wait. But why don’t we meet on Monday somewhere for lunch, if you have a break?”

Cas looked over his shoulder again and then suddenly smiled up at Dean. “Alright, but I have a conference on Monday. Tuesday would be better for me, I have a lunch break at 1 p.m.”

Dean could feel a smile growing on his face, despite the previous, serious conversation. This sounded exactly like a date. He never, ever wanted to mention something like this, but his mouth was faster: “Nice, only you and me alone, going for lunch.” Sometimes, Dean thought, sometimes he deserved to be punished for his reckless talking.

But regardless of what Dean just said, Cas was still smiling. Huh, this guy either pitied him or was used to stupid people around him, Dean thought. Or probably, a quiet voice in his mind whispered, there is a possibility, that he likes you.

Dean ignored the voice for now but as Cas turned around and walked back inside the house, Dean got the feeling, that he shouldn’t lose his hope completely jet.


	4. The story of Castiel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Castiel and Dean meet up for lunch and Cas tells him about his past and his wife. Because of his unability to do things right, Dean copes with his feelings the way he always does and does something stupid. And of course, there is no time to talk.

Tuesday came very slowly. On Monday afternoon Dean almost hit his head on the underside of the grey ford he was currently working on due to his lack of concentration. Bobby muttered something about ‘idjits’ when his colleague dropped something for the third time this day.

Bobby was a grumpy, but very nice elderly man and Dean was once again happy to work with him. If he heard that Dean referred to him as elderly though, he would probably not be that nice anymore and rip his throat out or something like that.

Tuesday came slowly, but Tuesday came and the morning of the day Dean felt as nervous as a teenager on his first day.

He couldn’t deny it anymore. He was in love with Castiel and every time he saw him, he fell more in love with him. He didn’t feel like he had his first crush anymore, he felt like one of those girls in those movies he pretended to hate, that confessed her undying love for the hero.

At 12:30 Dean sprinted to his beloved Impala and felt a little bit of calmness flood through him at the familiar sound of the engine. It was just lunch.

Dean drove all the way to the high school just to sit nervously in his car for another ten minutes.

When Cas emerged from one of the front doors he was alone, but almost every student looked after him as he approached the eye-catching car. It was probably weird for them to see their teacher walking with such a fast and energetic step, meeting some guy in a black car. Whereas they probably couldn’t even see Dean.

The mechanic once thought about getting out and opening the door for Cas, but that would have attracted even more attention.

After Cas got in and closed the door, Dean tried to ease the tension a little bit by saying: “Hey, Cas, you nervous?” Of course, Cas reacted differently than Dean thought and instead of shrugging and denying it, he let out a silent chuckle.

“Actually, I am,” de dark-haired man said. “But it’s going to be alright after I told you my story.”

At that, Dean nodded shortly and started the engine. He had chosen a quiet little diner at the edge of the town, similar to the one they had been to the day after they met. It had bacon cheeseburgers so Cas would like it and Dean loved every food that was at least a little bit greasy.

They sat down, ordered and Cas started to fiddle with his fingers. At that sight, Dean felt his heart sink and all he wanted at this moment was to comfort the other man. But he also wanted to hear the story so he sat back and waited, trying not to pressure Cas.

“My family is very religious,” Cas finally started after a while. “You probably already noticed my weird name; it’s actually from an angel.” That made sense, Dean thought.

“So, my family is friends with this other family since… ever, or something and they always sit together in church and stuff. Therefore, naturally, their oldest son married my only sister when I was only eleven years old, what merged our families officially.”

The waitress brought their drinks and Dean smiled reassuringly at Cas before taking a sip. So far, the story hasn’t been that bad.

“Well, the other family also had a daughter in my age.” Okay, here we go. “I liked her from the beginning; I mean I somehow grew up with her, but I didn’t realize until I was sixteen, that my parents expected me to go out with her. And even though I had some other interests at that time, I obeyed, the good son I was and we became boyfriend and girlfriend.”

His voice went from sad to sour at the last words and Dean wondered, if Cas was close with his family, or if something had happened that drew them apart. He himself didn’t really know what it was like to have a big family since his mother died early and his father had been absent the most of his childhood. He only had his brother.

“Well, it was weird, I knew something was not like in the romantic Hollywood movies, but I didn’t have anything to compare it to.”

Cas sky-blue eyes flitted shortly to Dean’s face before looking away again. It seemed as if the dark-haired man was not sure how the other would react to something he was about to say and it made Dean’s hands sweaty.

“So, you stayed together?” Dean asked to keep his opposite going.

“So, we stayed together. Because of the religiousness of our family, we didn’t… consume our relationship, because we wanted to wait until the wedding, but we were very close.” Sometimes Dean thought, Cas was from another century.

“We got engaged when we were only twenty and married at the age of 23. The wedding night was a catastrophe. I couldn’t do it.” Cas was actually blinking tears away.

“It’s not so bad,” Dean tried to reassure him. “It happens sometimes when you’re not feelin’ it-“

“No, you don’t understand,” Cas said rather urgently. He placed his hands on the table and held Dean’s gaze captured with his eyes. “I could not only not do it. I could not do it with a woman.”

There was a silence after that. Both men were so much engaged in each other’s eyes, that they didn’t even notice the waitress delivering their food. He somehow had expected that, Dean’s mind supplied helpfully.

“Okay,” Dean said a little breathlessly after some minutes. Then he remembered something. “Then what about Mia?”

Cas sighed and suddenly a little smile pulled at the corners of his mouth.

“Our parents expected us to have kids. So even though my wife was mad as hell after I told her about my suspicion considering my sexuality, she insisted to find a way to conceive a child.” Dean shifted in his seat because he remembered how uncomfortable it had been for him to have sex with Jo. And he somehow did like women in a sexual way.

“So, being the good husband, I am,” Cas said with a bitter tone in his voice “I got myself as drunk as possible and slept with her.”

“After a few months, we found out that she was pregnant and told our parents immediately. They were quite happy, but it apparently wasn’t, what my wife had expected. She never talked to me again afterwards.”

At that, Dean had to swallow. He suddenly noticed the fries in front of him and started to chew on one. “Never?” he asked disbelievingly.

“Well,” Cas shifted in his seat and started to dig into his fries as well. “She told me that she didn’t want the kid anymore sometimes. I begged her to refrain from aborting it and said I would do anything she wants. She told me to leave her the lower part of the house and bring her food once in a while. Sometimes she-“

Cas looked at Dean with an urgent look on his face and pressed on. “You know, all of this is my fault. If I didn’t… If I wasn’t… I should have found a way to love her the way she deserves. I just… The moment I saw Mia’s face for the first time on an ultrasound, that I had made my wife go to, I was lost. I couldn’t go back. I needed to keep this farce up, to meet my daughter alive and healthy, even if that means, that the house is dark all day and that Mia is afraid to laugh.”

At the last words, the grown man in front of Dean let his shoulders slump forwards and buried his face in his hands.

It sounded bad, but Dean could not find the main fault in Castiel. Obviously, his family was too fucked up to see, that their members were unhappy and wanted to pretend to be ‘normal’ at any cost. He wanted to share his thoughts with Cas, but when it came to emotional encounters, he seemed to be unable to find his words.

So, they just sat there, eating in silence and avoiding each other’s eyes. When Cas lunch break was over, Dean drove him back to the high school and found his own way back to work. Through all of the rest of the day, the mechanic's mind stayed with their conversation in the diner and the words he didn’t say.

-

Of course, he called Sam first thing after work. Since his new start with Jo, the two brothers had grown even closer together, and Dean really has needed a second opinion on how to approach Cas. He desperately wanted the dark-haired man to know, that Dean didn’t think badly about him.

“Dean,” came the breathless voice of the younger Winchester out of his phone after it rang five times.

“Dude,” Dean greeted his brother chuckling. “You don’t have to pick up the phone when you’re in the middle of-“

“Jogging, I was jogging,” Sam interrupted him quickly. Dean could see his shocked and slightly embarrassed expression, followed by a bitchface through the phone. “Are you alright?”

Of course, his little brother would ask this. During the last ten years, Dean hadn’t called once when he wasn’t in trouble. Either he needed Sam to get him out of arrest, or he was so drunk and lonely, that he longed for the voice of the only person who kinda somehow liked him.

“I’m fine,” Dean said automatically. “I’d like to talk to you about Cas, though.”

“Wait, Dean, hold on.” There were some muffled sounds in the background and the sound of a phone being set on speaker. “Did I just understand you correctly? You, my big brother Dean, want to talk to me about your feelings? For the second time already? What did this guy do to you?”

“Shut up,” Dean growled and pinched his nose. He was sitting in the armchair he decided to buy by himself in the house he had chosen together with his wife, drinking tea, because he made one for said pregnant wife and thought if nobody saw it he could also have one. He had to admit he was getting soft. “Do you wanna talk now or not?”

“Sure, spit it out,” Sam said calmly and Dean could hear a smile in his voice.

So, Dean told him everything he found out that day. He felt a little bit guilty at sharing Cas personal information with somebody else, but this somebody was the only person Dean trusted besides Jo. He would never use this information to hurt somebody.

Sam was silent for some time after Dean finished. Then he breathed out slowly.

“Wow, that’s… that’s fucked up,” he said. “Dean, that sounds a lot like clinical depression.”

Dean nodded in the Phone. “Yeah, now that you say it, I was too much occupied with worrying about Cas loading all this shit on his shoulders to think about his wife. Do you think it’s possible to help her?” He started to feel a little bit guilty for not having thought about that earlier. If she never got out of her room and always wanted silence and the darkness Dean had seen when he came for Cas on Saturday, she was probably also living a shitty life.

“I don’t even know her name,” Dean mumbled realizing it just now.

“Okay Dean, you should probably talk to Cas first and tell him everything you didn’t say in your previous conversation because you are you.” Dean snorted at that but was shut up fast by his brother. “Then we should probably talk to him about help for his wife because they can not keep living like that.”

“Yeah,” Dean said, already getting nervous about his following talk with Cas. He tried to think of an excuse to go over as early as this evening but he did not want to disrupt anything.

“Dean, I can already hear you panic over the phone,” Sam said with his bitchface voice. “Relax, I saw how he looks at you. He likes you.”

Suddenly Dean felt like a teenager wanting to ask ‘do you really think so?’ but refrained from it. His brother didn’t have a lot of experience, but he was a logical thinking man and wouldn’t raise Deans hopes up if he didn’t have any indications for his theory.

“Okay,” Dean said instead. “How’s the marriage preparation going then? She already crazy?”

  
-

They kept on talking about Sam’s life until Dean thought it was time to check on his pregnant wife and go to bed. Since she was pregnant and had to stay mostly at home for the last months, they were both a little bit on the edge, feeling that it was getting serious now.

Dean really tried to sleep that night. He lay in bed next to Jo because she had been feeling hormonally charged for the last few days. Also, he really liked to have a warm body next to him when he woke up the next morning but he would never admit that out loud. Blinking at the ceiling he kept thinking of Cas and his wrongly placed guilt, though.

Why should the man think that Dean doesn’t like him because of that for one more night? The older Winchester looked at his alarm clock and found it to be already 2 am. He sighed, pulled back the covers and glided into his slippers standing next to the bed.

“Dean?” a sleep drunken voice behind him asked. “Why are you awake?”

Dean reached out for his wife blindly and his fingers touched her enormous belly. Trying to pet it reassuringly, he actually felt one of his kids kicking him. He still couldn’t believe he was going to be a dad so soon, his babies already being so active all day and night.

“I need to try and get things straight with Cas,” he said in a low voice. “Want to have everything settled before the babies come, alright?” He could see Jo nod in the dim light.

“Just don’t stay away for too long,” she said accompanied by a long yawn. “They get twirly when you’re not here.”

Dean nodded himself and felt pride swell up in his chest. Then he turned around, scrambled out of the room and almost fell down the stairs because of the hurry he was in. He hoped he could wake Cas up somehow. Else way his mission was pretty doomed.

Stepping out of his front door, Dean felt the prickle of the slightly cold night mixed with excitement on his skin.

He almost ran to Cas door but didn’t know how to proceed from that on. He felt itchy in his skin as if this was something important. Like he had felt the night his mom died or the day Sam went away for college and everything Dean was left with was his alcoholic dad.

As quiet as possible, Dean snuck around the house, actually finding a window with the lights still on.

Feeling like something between a helplessly romantic teenage boy and a burglar he took the ladder he had stored in his garage and unfolded it beneath the window. After he climbed up, he could see a small room, quite similar to the nursery he had furnished together with Jo in their house.

On his left side, a small bed was set up, in which a very small looking Mia was sleeping in enlightened by the light under the ceiling in the shape of a bee. Dean was almost melting as he followed the apparently hand-painted figures on the bright yellow walls, that told stories about bears and squirrels and all the animals in the world.

To his right, he spotted a very asleep Cas in a rocking chair, fully clothed with a children’s book in his lap and weird glasses askew on his nose. Dean took a deep breath at that sight, not wanting to disturb the peaceful picture, but guessing that Cas neck would be stiff tomorrow if he slept in this position all night. None of them was getting younger.

He lightly tapped on the glass to not wake Mia, but still hard enough for Cas to suddenly jolt awake. As soon as he seemed to have comprehended where he was he seemed to see Dean through the window and his eyes went wide almost comically.

After he had stumbled towards Dean and opened the window, he reached out with his hand, probably to help the other man in but then stopped.

“Dean, what are you doing here?” he asked in a whisper like voice and the older Winchester had to admit that it was indeed a little bit weird to knock on his neighbor’s window in the first floor in the middle of the night.

“Can I come in?” Dean asked instead of answering and Cas hurried to make way for him. “Of course,” the dark-haired man whispered and after having a look at his sleeping daughter took Dean’s hand to guide him into his bedroom.

Well, we have never gotten so easily in somebody’s bedroom, Deans mind supplied helpfully. He took a deep breath. He could do it.

He looked around in the dark room, spotting a bed, a messy desk, and some bystander before setting his eyes on Cas gaze.

“It’snotyourfaultyourfamilyisshitandyourwifeprobablyhasdepressions,” Dean pressed out in a hurry to make himself say everything he needed to say. At Cas puzzled look he obviously did exactly what Dean Winchester always does. Something dumb.

Thinking back at his life until now there had probably only been one thing that he ever did right and that was building a life with Jo. And even that had been done in a way, that kept Dean awake at night because he thought about how she could have a better life and would presumably leave him one day as well.

So, he kissed Cas.

He dug right in, both hands on the other man’s cheeks, feeling his stubble scratch at his palms. Even though the blue-eyed man’s lips were chapped most of the time, they felt even softer than Dean had imagined. And Dean had imagined a lot.

Coming to his senses at the thought that this wasn’t one of his daydreams in the auto shop, he tried to reel back to apologize and to wave it off as a heated accident. But he didn’t get that far.  
Suddenly surprisingly strong hands grasped into the collar of the leather jacket he had hastily thrown over his pajamas and dragged him closer again.

Their lips met for a second time and Dean could feel warmness explode in his chest at the taste and smell of Cas face that was suddenly closer than it had ever been. Between kissing those soft lips, he drunk in the air around his counterpart greedily not wanting to ever forget any second of this moment ever.

Dean’s hands, first shyly staying on Cas face wandered to his neck and tug at the others gorgeous hair. The sound the shorter man made at that was almost pornographic and Dean tried to remember why he came here but failed.

There was something… something why they shouldn’t do this but suddenly a warm and wet tongue slit against his slightly parted lips. He let it in and gently caressed it with his own tongue, gripping Cas head tighter as the dark-haired man let his arms fall down to his waist and drew him closer by embracing him.

All of sudden a weird noise reached Dean’s ear. It was almost like a buzzing but more electrical than a fly…

His phone, it was his phone. He came to his senses fast, patting his pockets for the source of the buzzing, because he remembered, that only Sam’s and Jo’s number were on vibration mode at this time of the day.

Without looking Cas in the eye, he accepted the call and whispered “Hello,” in the phone even though there was no need to whisper anymore.

“Dean,” it was Jo an she sounded shaken and weirdly calm at the same time. “I got up to get a glass of water and well, you know, at first I thought I peed myself, but… erm, the water broke. I don’t know what you are doing right now, but you should probably come over again.”

“Wait, what now?” Dean asked now a little bit louder, realizing in the same moment what this meant. He was going to be a dad. “Are… Are you okay? I mean, uh, okay, I’m coming!”

With a wild look in the eyes, he turned back to Cas after hanging up. Why couldn’t his babies have waited a few more minutes, a part of his mind asked. The other parts were screaming.

“Eh, okay, Cas, I’m sorry, I have to go the babies are coming,” he stumbled, sporting a grin he found himself unable to remove from his face.

Cas firstly looked surprised but then smiled in sympathy.

“That’s good news,” the shorter man said, still looking kind of rumpled with flushed cheeks and red lips. Dean didn’t want to know what he looked like. “I will let you out downstairs; you can take your latter tomorrow."

Even though they really needed to talk about what happened just minutes ago, Dean was eternally grateful for Cas to guide him through the darkness and wishing him good luck on his porch. This was going to be a very long night.


	5. The birth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean and Jo drive to the hospital and Dean has a lot of self doubt, what is really, really not helpful for Jo.

The next hours happened in a blur for Dean. He primarily stumbled into his house, surprised to find his wife sitting calmly in his armchair, the hospital bag in her lap. After hurling her into his Baby, not even thinking about the strains this maneuver could leave on his beloved leather seats, he dialed Sam’s number even though it was just the beginning and it was in the middle of the night. He let Jo talk to her, being to occupied with driving and not freaking out.

He tried to replay their last conversation with the doctor from the hospital in his head. Baby number one, almost definitively a girl was laying in starting position with her head next to the exit and her feet in the face of her sibling. Said baby number two was a little bit smaller, liked to hide its gender and lay ready to follow his sister.

Everything was perfect, everything was good, except for that a birth of twins was risky and Dean had had a shitty father and would therefore also be a shitty father and he was not ready and they didn’t have enough diapers and he just had kissed his cute neighbor like a school girl and…

“Dean,” Jo’s voice startled him out of his thoughts. “Relax,” she said with a calmness that was so typical for her. She would probably even peacefully go into death, possibly giving her life for others if the chance was given to her.

Dean took a deep breath, realizing that they already had made it to the hospital parking lot and for a moment thinking of all the turns and tosses his life had made for him to end up here.

“Everything will be all right,” his wonderful wife said while she unbuckled her seatbelt. “Also, I just called my mom while you were blacked out and she is on her way from Nebraska straight to the hospital, so you probably should prepare yourself.”

Shit, Dean thought as he killed the engine and helped Jo out of the car. Saying that he was afraid of his mother in law was a big understatement; he was utterly terrified of her since he had met her after their wedding. He could understand that she had been pissed that her only daughter had married without her being there, but she also had a big collection of rifles and knives and a stare that could possibly make hot springs freeze.

After they had registered and had the first examination, they had to wait for the contractions to get closer and more powerful. While he tried to help his wife through the worst of the pain, Dean’s panicking mind found a new direction to pace in.

“Jo,” he whispered as soon as an exceptionally strong cramp had slowly died down and she breathed normally again. “What if our children think it’s weird, that their parents don’t always sleep in the same room and occasionally bring home other people like their neighbor’s dad?”

Dean had thought about this from time to time for the last months, especially after he had found out how deep his attraction for Cas really was. But now everything was getting so real and he had the feeling, that they hadn’t spoken about some important stuff yet.

Jo’s face turned into a painful grin and she hit her husband in the arm with her fist. “Okay Dean, I know you are freaking out, but you have to calm down,” she said panting heavily as another contraction hit her. “You love Cas and he loves you. Don’t say anything,” she continued as Dean wanted to interrupt her. “I saw his face when he looks at you, he is one hundred percent screwed. Just like you. So, get your shit together; our children will love it when you’re happy and by the way, they need you now, so can you pleasaaaahh”

The end of her sentence came out in a rush but Dean got her point. This was not the place to think about his weird relationship life, but to support his wife who was in great pain and fought like a warrior. That’s how he had to view it, he decided. As a battle for the sake of his children and Dean was an excellent fighter.

“Okay, it’s okay, I’m here,” he said and held Jo while she breathed herself through the greatest pain. Panic swallowed down, they braced themselves for the next exhausting couple of hours.

-

In the end, it was faster than they expected. Sam and Jess had arrived at seven in the morning and accompanied Jo’s mother and her friend Ash, who had reached the hospital three hours later.

If Dean should recall afterward how many hours it had taken, he couldn’t. After Hours of pain for his wife and supporting words whispered by him, Dean finally held his daughter in his arms. Her face was wrinkled, and she had a very red color as well as a white substance all over her, what was because she was born before the due date, as Dean remembered.

She was stunningly beautiful.

And she screamed as if the devil himself was around. Dean was grinning down at her, swaying a little on his feet and thinking of how much her attitude already resembled his.

“She is beautiful,” Dean told Jo, who was preparing herself to be torn apart for a second time. He slowly lowered her tiny body wrapped in blankets down to his wife’s eye level, who smiled sleepily at her slowly calming down daughter. Then her face was split in pain again, and Dean hurried to his feet to watch the birth of his second kid.

After a few tense minutes, a slightly wet sound broke the almost silence, but before Dean could have a look, the doctor turned around with the second body in his arms.

“What is wrong,” Dean asked with a slight panic in his voice. “There’s no screaming. There should be screaming!”

Going around the doctor and the nurses with his still upset daughter in his arms, Dean saw just in time how his son opened his mouth and let out a quite low wailing sound. Smiling back at Jo to re-assure her he slowly shuffled closer, watching how they examined the slightly smaller baby.

“Everything is all right,” Dr. Gabriel said, advising a nurse to wrap the boy and putting the stethoscope back around his neck. “He is just a little bit shy. Congratulations for a healthy daughter and a healthy son.” With that, he placed the small boy in Dean’s other arm, who directly went to Jo to lay the babies on her chest.

There were tears in her eyes, and Dean could feel his wet cheeks as well. Whatever he had done wrong at any point in his life, this moment was definitively worth it.

-

Sam was the first to see Dean’s grinning face as he stepped out into the waiting area. As he approached his brother, the other closed the distance and hugged him tightly, for the first time in ages initiating a hug himself.

“I have a daughter and a son,” Dean grinned proudly, only now noticing the other people in the room, who were also waiting for the news. Jo’s mom smiled at him for the first time and surprisingly pulled him into an embrace as well. “Come, you have to see them,” Dean said and let the way to the rest of his little family. The only ones missing are Cas and Mia, he thought and wondered if he could call them soon.

The urge became stronger fast as Dean watched the others coo over his new-born babies and retreating a little bit to the background he dialed the number he had saved in his phone but never called.

Despite it being ten in the evening, Cas picked up after two waiting sounds. “Hello, Dean,” he greeted as usual and Dean couldn’t suppress the grin, that crept in his face again for the hundredth time in the last minutes. He wondered for a second why they never called each other, even though they both had the others number, but he guessed the answer was obvious since they lived right next to each other.

“Hey, Cas,” Dean said after a few moments of being speechless and fighting with happy tears again. “I…,” he started and cleared his throat. Suddenly he remembered how they parted last night.

“Is everything okay,” Cas asked, concern sweeping thickly into his voice.

“Yes, yes, Cas…,” Dean reassured him fast, trailing off again. “I am a dad,” he laughed not sure how he lost the control over his speech so easily. His head was spinning, and he wondered how it could have been just under 24 hours since he’s had the best kiss of his life. And Cas had kissed back.

Damn it, Dean, his homeless, irresponsible old self thought. When did you become a complete chick-flick with family and love and all this shit? For a second his ol’ dad’s voice came to his mind, yelling at him, how no son of his could be gay or cry like a little bitch.

But then Cas spoke again.

“Wow, that’s wonderful, Dean,” he said, his smile clearly leaking into his voice. Dean’s breathless laughter mad the others in the room turn to him.

“It’s Cas,” he told them stepping closer and turning the phone to speaker. The smile on the faces of most of his family made him understand, that they really accepted the dark-haired man as part of Dean and therefore part of the clan.

Coming closer and ignoring Jo’s Mum in the process, he crouched down next to his wife and his twins. The baby girl seemed to have herself exhausted, seemingly asleep to gather new strength to annoy her parents, whereas her brother blinked up at Dean with clear baby-blue eyes. Man, the two of them really needed names to address them better.

“Okay, Cas,” he said into the phone quietly to not wake his daughter. “Meet little Miss Winchester and her tiny brother.” At that, the little boy made a gurgling sound and kicked his feet, that were tangled in the soft green blanked they had bought a few weeks ago.

“I think he protests at being called tiny,” Jo said, affectionately smiling down at two small faces.

“Well, he will need to get used to that, having a big sis,” Dean laughed, still keeping the volume down for his daughter’s sake. She scrunched her face as if to wake up soon regardless his attempts and he laid his hand that was not holding the phone on her back to soothe her.

“I never heard yourself call Sam ‘tiny’, Dean,” Cas suddenly said in a way to straight voice, what made everyone in the room giggle.

What if he could have this, Dean thought. What if he could leave everything behind, have a wonderful family and be with the person, that made his heart flutter and breathing easier. The smile on his face grew unimaginable wider, making his head feel dizzy and all the bad voices recede to the background.

“Thank you,” he whispered to an exhausted but contend looking Jo. This would have never been possible without her, and he was eternally grateful for whatever made her stick with him.

-

“Mary Ellen Winchester and William Bobby Winchester,” Dean grinned at his wife, sitting on her hospital bed and holding a piece of paper and a pen in his hands. Outside of the window, the sun was shining and both of them couldn’t wait to go out and show their children the world.

“It’s perfect,” Jo laughed with a tear in her eye, gently bouncing William in her arms who fell asleep after being fed. She had complained about the weird hormones, that still hadn’t left her body, but the doctors had said that it was completely natural this way. That didn’t mean she had to like it, though.

“Okay, let me get the form,” Dean said leaving the three of them alone for a second to find a nurse. He was very satisfied with their choice of names; every kid got a wonderful first name to honor one of their dead grandparents and a second name for a living one. Of course, Bobby was not really his dad; Dean knew that, but the older grumpy man had helped him in this short time more than his real father ever could have.

Slightly jogging excitedly with the form through the hallways back to their room Dean earned himself a few disapproving looks from the hospital staff. After he rounded a particularly sharp corner, he suddenly found himself brought to a halt, though.

The momentum of his hurried walk made him almost faceplant into a head of dark, messy bed hair. Drawing in a sharp breath while finding stability in clutching to the other's sleeve with his unoccupied hand, Dean knew before the man turned who he had run into.

“Cas,” he whispered breathlessly as blue eyes found his and a hint of recognition flickered across them. On his hip, he balanced Mia, who actually squealed at the sight of the older Winchester, at what both men were so surprised, that they didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then, trying to avoid the others gaze, Dean took Mia out of his arms and threw her slightly in the air. “Did somebody miss me?” he grinned up at her while she giggled.

“Yes,” Cas said, smiling slightly at the sight in front of him. All the fluttery feelings in his stomach from the last time they had seen each other came back to Dean with a great force and he couldn’t do anything but stare into blue eyes for several minutes.

“Let’s see if we can find my wife, hm?” Dean said awkwardly after clearing his throat.

“Sure,” Cas smiled and followed a brabbling Dean and a laughing Mia to the room, where Jo, Mary, and William stayed.

Opening the door and coming to the bed the older Winchester bounced Mia on his hip and then leaned her down to his son’s eye level. “Okay Mia, you know Jo already and I told you she was carrying two babies, right?” he explained to her, and she looked at him with a serious expression as if she was actually considering what he said.

“So here is the thing. The babies came out two days ago, and I want you to meet William,” he lowered her down so she could touch his head briefly and she tried to repeat “Billam” at what every-body chuckled, “and Mary.” He also lowered her to the small baby bed in which normally both of the small humans slept and that was now only inhabited by the baby girl. Mia’s small hands gripped the cloth of the yellow blanket to see better and Dean could see a smile tugging at her lips.

“Yeah, I know they still look a little bit squished,” the proud father said and looked over his shoulder to a very amused Cas.

“Can I also see them?” the dark-haired man asked after a few seconds of staring between the two of them. “Sure,” Jo said from behind Dean with a look on her face as if she was very entertained. She handed over the sleeping ‘Billam’ after Cas had approached her and Dean watched his face lit up like a thousand candles.

“Oh, you are a cute one,” the grown man cooed and if possible, Dean fell even more in love with him in that moment. Why could this not become his life? Why was life always so complicated, putting stones in their ways, Dean thought. It’s because you don’t deserve to be happy, the cruel part of his mind was answering.

He shook his head at this.

“Sad?” a tiny voice in his arms asked, accompanied by a small hand on his face. He smiled down at Cas daughter and said: “Yeah, I’m fine.” I’m just worried about your parents. And guilty for thinking of your mom as a problem, even if only for a few seconds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe, these names are the cheesiest thing I could have thought about *.*


	6. The happy ever after?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Winchesters return home and then have to find a way to help Cas wife. Dean also gets nervous again, but Cas won' have any of his bullshit, of course.

“I think your wife has depressions.”

“No, Sammy I cannot say it like that.” Both of the Winchesters were sitting in Dean’s living room on the floor, each of them having a baby Winchester in front of them playing with their feet.

“Well, it would also not be good to keep the situation like this. For the both of them,” Sam responded, making silly faces at Billy between his stretched-out legs. “I did some research.” Dean rolled his eyes heavily and grinned down at his daughter as if to say ‘your uncle is a huge nerd as always’.

“No, listen. I did some research and I think, that she really has major depressions or clinical depression as I called it before. It can be because of the pregnancy hormones, but it’s very unlikely for her to find her way back to a normal life on her own.” His urgent tone made Dean think, what he had done to fight off his demons (sex and booze) and what he really would have needed (his family).

“So, you say she has to go to a hospital? Or mental asylum?” Dean asked, not sure if Cas would be up to that with all the guilt he was already feeling.

“No, I mean, of course, I think she needs a doctor”, Sam started in his lawyer voice again. “But first and foremost, I think she needs somebody who she had trusted before all of this had happened. I mean right now she kind of sees all the bad in her life in Castiel, so maybe we can ask him if he knows a friend or a family member else than him who she was close to in the past.”

Dean nodded slowly. “Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, I don’t wanna seem, as if I’m trying to get rid of her, you know. I really don’t think things should stay like they are though, for the sake of everybody involved. I just don’t know how to explain this to Cas.”

“Should I talk to him?” the younger Winchester asked from his place on the floor as Dean got up to stretch his legs. His bones really weren’t the ones of a twenty-years-old guy anymore. Considering it he slowly walked over to the kitchen in which a fridge was located, that hopefully contained some nice cool drinks.

“Nah, I’m good. I think it’s better if I do it, you know we’re kind of close.” At his brothers chuckling, he shouted over his shoulder: “Oh, shut your face, or you will have to endure a horrible thirst for the rest of the evening.”

-

Dean kept pacing in the living room long after Sam had left and after they had put the babies to sleep. Jo had gone to bed half an hour after them, still being exhausted from the birth in addition to the hourly crying in the night.

You can do it; it’s just Cas, Dean reminded himself over and over again, slowly pacing towards the door. As the pentagonal clock (he got as a wedding gift from his brother) on the kitchen counter made audible that it was 10 p.m., he came to a sudden halt and decided that it was now or never.

The moment he touched the doorknob though there was an unexpected knock on the other side.

Dean took a step back, to decide if his stressed and sleep-deprived brain had just imagined the sound or if there was really somebody requesting him or his wife at that time of the day. Before he could fall in his downward spiral again he opened the door with a little bit more momentum than necessary.

On the other side was a three-centimeter shorter, dark-haired, blue-eyed man with a very sleepy looking infant in his arms.

“Cas,” Dean breathed out surprised.

“Hello Dean,” the other said and licked his lips as if he was nervous to say the next words. Last time they had met at the hospital, he had been kind of self-assure, so it was probably not because of the kiss but it probably was, Dean’s mind started to ramble.

“I… I need your help, Dean,” Cas said with his gravelly voice looking down and then at Mia for reassuring. “Mia had her first bad dream, I think and now she is a little bit cranky. We woke up her mother, so we cannot stay and I thought since you have a couch maybe we could stay here.” Before Dean could even open his mouth, the blue-eyed man in front of him hurried on. “I know, you have your own garrison to keep you awake right now but we promise we try to be silent and don’t disturb you further.”

For a few second Dean stared unbelievingly at a very anxious looking Cas and an almost sleeping Mia. Then he embraced them both in a very tight hug.

“Of course, you can stay,” Dean murmured in the others slightly curly hair. “You are always welcome here, no matter what Cas, you hear me?” He leaned back to make sure, that Cas nodded and saw Mia looking up at him with watery eyes. Damn her puppy eyes were almost as good as Sammy’s.

“Let’s get Mia into the travel crib, that we secretly mostly bought to keep a look at the babies while we are downstairs, sounds good?” Cas nodded again and Dean set everything up, placing the other on the couch and making tea for the both of them. After he comforted her for another five minutes, Mia finally fell asleep again and her father lay her down into the crib.

“I’m sorry that-“ Cas started but Dean wouldn’t let him.

“No, stop apologizing. It’s fine.” Raking his fingers through his hair, the older Winchester tried to gather his thoughts, because he really needed to do it right this time. Looking anywhere but in Cas direction he put all his concentration in the fight against his urge to suppress his feelings, coming from his assumption that they were not worth anybody’s attention. But this was for Cas.

“What I tried to say last time, but apparently was to chicken to is…” At the short break, Cas tried to intervene, but Dean held up his hand, looking the other straight in the eyes now. “No, wait, I got this.”

“It’s not your fault that your wife is in this state, she probably got depressions from the pregnancy and the outer circumstances and these are very serious. What I’m trying to say is, that you really could not have done a lot different, I mean you both decided to marry and being gay is really not your fault nor could you have foreseen it that well if everybody always tried to press you into a certain character. So, the ones to blame here are definitely your family members and Sam said you two should consider a doctor but also find somebody your wife trusted before you married, maybe a family member or a friend.”

“I’m sorry I told Sam.” There was a silence after this, Cas fidgeting with the hem of his way too fancy shirt but not breaking eye contact with Dean. “It’s okay,” he said after a while looking over at his daughter.

With a sight, the dark-haired man buried his face in his hands, and Dean didn’t resist the urge to lean over and wrap his friend/hopefully-more-than-a-friend tightly into his arms.

“You think we can help her with that?” a small voice asked after some time of trembling in the others embrace. “I remember that she has a sister, Hannah, whom she was close with before we moved here. I could call her.”

While he said this, Cas had moved his head out of the hug and his face was now very close to Deans. Concentrate Winchester; he needs you now. “Sam thinks so and he is the smart one,“ he answered while trying not to look at certain chapped lips.

“You know that you are just as intelligent as he is,” Cas started coming unexpectedly closer. “I actually thought about calling help before, but I wanted to discuss it with her first but she doesn’t let me talk to her. I sometimes think my people skills are not that good; I’m better with kids than with adults. The idea with her sister is very good though because I could just invite her casually.”

His eyes flitted over Dean’s face as much as they can at that short distance and a tone of what seemed like hope miked with early relieve mixed into his gaze.

A soft brush of lips and a small chaste kiss brought Dean back to reality, though.

“We should wait with this until everything is fine between you and your wife, I think,” the Winchester quietly said, while a part of his mind screamed at him for not getting in the others pants or at least mouth. He slightly leaned back and watched Cas open his eyes slowly.

A smile crept into the blue-eyed man’s face after a brief moment of studying the expressions of his counterpart. That made the tension ease out of Dean’s shoulders, because a part of him was still worried, that Cas didn’t want to be with him.

“But you’re glad I feel the same?” Cas asked and Dean started to chuckle relieved.

“Yes, I’m very, very glad.” At that, they leaned their foreheads together and stayed like this until the faint crying of a baby started to creep into their audible senses.

-

  
Five days later Dean watched from behind his curtains as a petite,  brunette woman exited a big black Jeep. She wore a boring grey blazer, plain Jeans and black boots and while she walked up the stairs to Castiel’s porch, her gait was confident and certain. This had to be Mia’s aunt then.

“We are no stalkers; we just want to know what’s going on,” Dean said to a half-asleep Billy in his arms, who he was swaying gently. They had decided to just keep calling the boy by the nickname Mia had somehow given him and since Jo’s dad had answered to the name of Bill, it was not too close together.

After Cas had slept over last week, he had immediately called Hannah, Hael’s sister as Dean had finally found out. He had known, that the families were very religious, but those names were still kind of weird.

The woman entered the house, and the older Winchester saw a glimpse of his hopefully-soon-lover in the darkness of the entrance hall. He sighed and turned around. He would have loved to support Cas during this talk, but that would only make things more complicated.

“Let’s get you to bed, all right?” he asked his son, who, of course, did not respond.

  
-

The departure of Castiel’s wife was so fast, that Dean didn’t even have a chance to whiteness it, not even from behind his living room curtains. She had left with her sister late in the evening as Cas had told him the next morning on the phone.

After that, it took six months.

Six months, in which Cas decided he could no longer live in the big silent house, that would always remind Mia of not being allowed to laugh and the darkness in the lower floor. As he brought up the topic of moving on some Saturday family meeting, Jo and Dean decided with a look, that they could stay in the spare bedroom as long as they wanted to.

They bought a new bed for Mia because she had been growing out of the old one anyways and then carried Cas bed and other furniture over with the help of Sam and Charlie from the other side of the road. Dean also took his new housemates to the home-improvement market and while both men flirted shamelessly with each other, the small girl decided with the point of her finger on turquoise walls and a light purple carpet.

Three weeks after Hael had gone with her sister, the news had apparently spread and Dean watched from his new favorite spot behind the curtains as two elderly people approached Cas old house. Said bed haired guy was sitting on the couch, Mia next to him and Mary in his arms. Billy meanwhile was being fed by Jo in the armchair.

“Uh, Cas?” Dean started and didn’t know how to continue at first. “Does your mom have brown hair, usually tied into a strict bun, wears a grey suit and does your dad look like an almost bald businessman?”

At the first mention of his mom, Cas had apparently looked up and was beside Dean at the end of the sentence.

“I actually didn’t expect for them to come anymore,” the shorter man mumbled frowning at the two intruders.

Instead of walking over, the three of them stayed behind the curtains and watched, Mary occasionally fidgeting with the buttons of Cas dress shirt. They observed as the Novaks climbed up the stairs to the porch, rang the doorbell and they also watched as they left twenty minutes later. Of course, not without looking into the dark windows and the backyard.

They didn’t say anything the whole time and they didn’t need to. Dean knew how Cas still missed his family but could not endure any more discussions about his life or how he lived it wrongly. And Cas knew that Dean knew.

Afterwards everything kind of settled. Mia’s second Birthday became the biggest Birthday she had had so far, with balloons and cake and half of the street invited for BBQ. The twins started to observe their surroundings for the first time and Sam married Jess on a wonderful late autumn afternoon. It seemed to have been the last day of warm sun and afterwards it was time to prepare for the holiday season.

The patchwork families first Christmas passed and it was everything, Dean had secretly wished for as a kid. They had a big tree, glittering full of lights and ornaments, gifts for everybody and a wonderful dinner cooked by the older Winchester himself.

Still, he was getting more and more frustrated because besides of the constant eye fucking and the flirting there was nothing going on between him and Cas. He understood that the other man was still in a formal marriage and didn’t come to terms with his wife yet, but a guy desired and Dean caught himself accidentally yearning more than once.

In the third week of February then, the letter arrived.

It had been sent to Cas old house, that they still frequently looked after but without the uncertainty already would have sold.

So, when Cas came back one day with a piece of paper in his one hand and the rest of the mail in the other, he was trembling. Dean immediately got up from the couch approaching him but not quite daring to touch the other. With her head leaned on the armchair, Jo was looking up from the floor, where she had been reading a magazine on hunting while playing with her baby’s feet.

“It’s from Hael,” Cas said after a suspenseful moment of his eyes flitting over the page. “She says she is sorry.” At the last words, his voice broke, but Dean still wasn’t sure if he should embrace him or not. Jo seemed to excuse herself to the kitchen after putting the twins in their shared crib, but neither man seemed to really have heard her.

Mia had been waddling up to them, probably because she had heard the stress in her father’s voice and Dean picked her up to be at eye level with them. Her facial expression was so serious that it was almost laughable, but the tension kept anybody from doing so.

“What else does it say?” Dean asked after more moments of silence and Cas looked up at him as if he had almost forgotten that there were more people in the room.

“She wants me to accept her apology and she…” he dropped the mail on the couch and dragged his hand over his face, “she… says it is not my fault, what happened.” Dean could see a single tear roll down the others cheek, but before he could take a step forward, Cas spoke again.

“To Mia she says, she is happy that she was born, and she wants to meet her one day, but she is just not ready for that.” His eyes turned unbelievable sad at that, and Dean finally closed the space between them and an initiated a three-people-hug with Mia half between them.

“Everything is goin’ to be all right,” the father of twins said again and again while stroking Cas hair with one hand and rocking the small girl with the other.

After some time, Mia requested to be set to the ground to proceed with her drawings and suddenly Dean’s face was held lovingly between the palms of two hands.

“She also said, she sets me free,” Cas said blue eyes full of adoration and wonder. How could this wonderful man ever like me, Dean thought, but voicing his thoughts as: ”Cas, you don’t have to…” he was quickly cut off by the press of the other's lips to his.

The kiss was only chaste, but after a few seconds, both men started to grin as if they had tasted the best thing in the world. “Okay,” Dean said as they leaned their foreheads together and then looked over at the present part of their weird family.

“Okay,” Cas answered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next one will be epilogue, and then it's done!


	7. The Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a little epilogue approx. six years after the story from Mary's point of view.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bye, bye *.*

“Daddy, the other kids all only brought two parents,” the little girl complained. Her name was Mary Ellen Winchester; she was about to start her first day at school and she did not like the looks the people gave her and her family for having 13 members. She had just counted them today.

There were her daddies, her mom, her big sister Mia, her slightly younger brother Billy, uncle Sam, aunt Jess, cousins Henry and Deanna, uncle Bobby and Charlie from the other side of the road with her girlfriend Dorothy.

“Darling, we already talked about this,” her dad Cas said, crouching down at her eye level as if she was a kid. Well technically she was, but still.

Even though she loved her calm and mostly considerate dad, daddy Dean had the better argument this time.

“You remember what we think about when we have bad thoughts?” he asked, and she knew exactly what he meant.

Family. Family comes before everything.

Even if her family was beyond normal, she loved it with every beat of her heart. What if her elderly sister had dark hair and blue eyes while her brother had brown eyes and she green ones and they both had sand-colored hair. She still was the greatest older sister one could ever imagine, reading books to Mary because she was not so fast at that and playing family with them.

What if her dads were in love with each other but her mom also lived in their house and sometimes brought her horrible boyfriends to dinner? What if uncle Bobby was not really related to them but the closest Mary ever had had for a granddad and what if her uncle Sam was the biggest nerd and always did funny science stuff with them, in a way that you didn’t even realize you were learning something.

Her family was perfect the way it was and she would protect them from any teasing if she must.

First adjusting her brothers vomit green tie, then turning to face the mass of students and parents in front of her she took a moment to reply.

“Yes, I do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hoped you liked it!  
> Please let me know, what you think*.*


End file.
